KT Benefits from Oracle's Integrated Solutions

KT, established in 1981, is a pioneer of South Korea's communications industry. It provides high-speed internet, wired and wireless phone, media, and communications services. In 2011, KT launched its ucloud biz service with 18,000 servers operating on a cloud platform, providing high-performance, secure, and cost-effective services to more than half of the top-20, publically listed companies in Korea and 3,500 corporate customers. KT, which has 85% market share in the domestic cloud market, enables business enterprises to significantly reduce operating expenses.

In a bid to become a global leader in information and communication technology, KT launched a business information system transformation project in 2010 to simplify and integrate core business systems after the merger of KT and its subsidiary KTF in 2009. The project integrated billing, operations support, enterprise resource planning, content management, and business intelligence systems. KT is one of the first large companies in Asia to execute a transformation project of this scale.

In December 2010, KT implemented the KT private-cloud project to support a virtualized environment for the business information project, which would transform its IT infrastructure into a revenue center, rather than just a cost-savings center.

KT plans to apply the best practices and experience gleaned from its private-cloud project to its upcoming public-cloud service, which will deliver value to enterprise customers and enable future expansion into the new markets.

Challenges

A word from KT

“We chose Oracle because it offered an optimized cloud solution with ease of integration and flexibility that fits perfectly with our internal private-cloud virtualization platform. We have significantly improved internal operational efficiency, reduced IT investment and staff costs, laid a solid foundation for the future expansion of our commercial-cloud offering, and positioned the company to become a global leader in information and communication technology.” – Kim Min Hyun, Director, Cloud Operation Team, KT

Deploy an integrated, private-cloud virtualization platform for the business information project to transform its disparate IT infrastructure into an open-cloud solution that reduces operating costs, improves service delivery, and helps the company remain competitive in the price-sensitive, communication-services market

Improve operational efficiency by automating cloud-related business processes, such as provisioning and resource management for thousands of servers and networking services

Provide a solid foundation to meet changing corporate demand for scalable, public-cloud solutions while increasing IT efficiency and business agility for future expansion in the communication services industry

Halved provisioning time for 120 virtual machines—requiring only 12 hours instead of 24 hours—enabling KT to reduce staff assigned to this task by two-thirds and to lower operating expenses

Deployed cloud services, such as infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service, 50% faster—in four hours instead of eight hours—and further reduced staff costs, thanks to a guided, cloud-setup wizard

Cut labor and investment costs for managing thousands of servers for the internal, private-cloud platform by developing a standardized and automated process for virtual machine provisioning, patching, monitoring, administration, and configuration

Increased business agility with an integrated and complete view of cloud-lifecycle management, enhancing competitiveness in the information and communication technology industry

Reduced development costs for a private-cloud solution by integrating self service application features into existing portals, enabling IT staff to easily deploy a range of services, such as provisioning applications with databases and platforms and defining policies for underlying resources (like CPU and memory) without complexity

Streamlined management for database, middleware, and applications and provided a solid foundation for future public-cloud offerings, improving the competitive position

Expected to improve transparency for usage and cost of the commercial-cloud offering by using metering and charge-back functionality to establish pricing and usage policy, enabling the enterprise to account for actual usage of services and minimize over-consumption of resources

Why Oracle

“We chose Oracle for its reputation for providing open source solutions, which helped us to seamlessly integrate our existing IT infrastructure into the private-cloud environment. We have significantly increased operational efficiency, lowered our investment and operating costs, and are positioned to become a global IT leader,” said Kim Min Hyun, director, cloud operation team, KT.

Implementation Process

In late 2010, KT began to implement Oracle VM Server for x86 and Oracle Linux for its internal private-cloud development project. KT also worked with Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services to provide on-site support and ensure high availability and maximize system performance. The new system went live in June 2013. KT migrated the core systems, such as those used for billing and operations support, into the private cloud, and the migration is expected to be complete in April 2014.

After a three-month proof on concept for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, KT moved forward with the implementation in March 2013, and the system went live in August 2013.

Partner

KT worked with Oracle Partner SIGMA Infocoms Inc. from proof of concept to deployment of Oracle Linux, Oracle VM Server for x86, and of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c during KT’s private-cloud development project.

“SIGMA Infocoms understood our business requirements, and the team’s technical expertise and experience in the communications and computer industry gave us a strong sense of confidence and contributed to the great success of the KT private-cloud project. It enabled us to realize the benefits of Oracle’ cloud solutions for our project and to maximize our business performance,” Kim said.